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Published: March 12th 2006
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Jo and the mopeds
Waiting for a space to cross was never easy Sat down to write this and realised its been two weeks since the last one.... seems time flies when you are buzzing around Asia. Since then we've gone to Saigon and explored a bit of Vietnam, flown up to Hong Kong and shopped till we dropped, then joined a tour group for China where we arrived last Tuesday. Im currently sat in a photcopy shop on their internet PC in downtown Dali, absolutely shattered after hardly sleeping at all last night, but I'll explain that later.
Anyways, we last 'blogged' from Cambodia, and the day after took a 7 hour bus journey (3 hours longer than we'd thought) from Phnom Penh to Vietnam and Saigon. Should call it Ho Chi Minh city really, as the name changed after the communists took over, but I keep spelling that wrong (and everyone still calls it Saigon anyway). You noticed the difference first coming from Cambodia to Vietnam in the quality of the roads, because Cambodia is still rebuilding after the troubles i mentioned before, and decent roads seem to be down the list of priorities. Vietnam, on the other hand, is big on building roads. Apparently the government there like to be,
In a bit of a bind
Its almost like this hole was made to fit....a little too well as it visibly shows the people the kind of things they are doing for them. They also need to be, as the second thing that you notice is the absolutely unbelievable amount of mopeds and bikes on the road. As you get into Saigon itself, you cant help but be impressed with the fact that people are able to make 1 million mopeds move around the place in a strange ballet of two wheeled madness. Crossing the roads is a real leap of faith, as you simply move out into the road and allow the buzzing hordes to steer somehow around you.
We got into a decent hostel in the center of Saigon (Hotel 64) which was fab apart from the way they got your bags to your room. We were on the fifth floor, and with no lift we walked up a fairly wide spiral staircase to our floor leaving our rucksacks downstairs as they said they'd 'bring them up'. They then attached the bags to a wire in the center of the staircase, pressed a button for the winch 7 floors up, and the bags gradually rose to our floor. We had to then lean out and
Aim, ready.....
Before anyone says anything, the gun was attached to the wall for safety, hence the stance. Obviously free to move around the gun would have been at my hip 'Arnie' style pull them over to us and detach the wire. Now my already mentioned concern around heights came to full effect here (scratch another sweat drenched shirt).
We only had four days in Vietnam, so we spent the first exploring Saigon itself. One of the unexpected things for us there was the quality and diversity of local stuff to buy at really low prices, and we decided to get a few things to send back. Had a quality moment at the post office after when trying to send it back. We had to have someone pack our box for us, and of all the people we could have been given for this task we got Herman Munster. He lumbered over, began 'sorting' the things we had already wrapped to go in the box, and so then to check if we had wrapped them well enough thought the best approach was to drop them onto the counter and see what noise they made. I guess the noise he was hoping for was the soft sound of a tissue wrapped balloon. Instead he chose to start this process with a vase and the 'clunk' as it hit the side was followed by a series of words from me that even Jo needed a translator for.
We took a day trip out of Saigon to the Ho Chi Minh tunnels, one of the areas from where the Viet Cong launched their eventually succesful campaign against the American forces in the 60s and 70s. That success is one of the things it takes a bit of getting used to when in Vietnam. In the west I guess we have grown up with the Vietnam War as a pretty disastrous episode in history, but although the Vietnamese fully recount the horrors of the war and in many ways are still living with them, they also see it as a great victory. Nowhere was that more evident than sat at the tunnels watching a 1967 Vietnamese black and white video describing the heroic Ho Chi peasants overcoming the 'foul captialist America aggresors'. The tunnels themsleves were pretty amazing, a couple of hundred kilmoeters at their peak going all throughout the countryside, even under an America base. They were also really, really narrow, so of course when we came to one of the entrances and the guide looked around for a volunteer to lower themselves in to demonstrate this he had to choose me. Getting in was a squash, but for a moment when pulling myself out and I got my money belt caught I think the guide was about to call for a spade.
One of the other things at the tunnel was an army supervised shooting range. Basically you went along a rack of various weaponry that was used during the war, chose one you liked and for a dollar a bullet could use it on the range. It was kind of like a paramilitary Tescos. Now I had never fired a gun in my life, never really had a great burning desire to, but when presented with a russian made AK47 and offered the chance to let loose a clip, well, I couldnt resist. Now like most lads i played a lot of war games with my mates, and always assumed that if the country was ever invaded i'd be like the kids in 'Red Dawn'*, a hero of the underground resistance movement. I guess it depends if they need someone who shoots like an inebriated duck. Of 10 shots I think 5 missed the wall the target was mounted on.
We had a couple of days left in Vietnam before our flight on so spent them up the coast from Saigon at a beach resort making the most of the sunshine before it was bound to get colder in china. We then flew on to Hong Kong. After 6 weeks in some of the more 'basic' parts of Asia, Hong Kong was a real change of scene. Its kind of like what we had imagined, all tall buildings and neon lights though for anyone planning to do some shopping Id suggest Singapore instead as it wasnt as cheap as we'd imagined for stuff like electronic gear. And as for food and hotels, it was probably five times more than we'd been paying. Still, Jo got a new camera as hers was on its last legs and hasnt until now let her do things like post photos to the blog and was about 25% cheaper for that than the UK. We then met up with our tour group as the next three weeks were to be spent on an organised tour from Hong Kong to Beijing. They are a nice bunch, 3 Ozzies, 3 Canadians and 2 other Brits and a mix of ages. We spent the first night in HK and took the vernicular to the top of the hill behind HK city center for the view. Unfortunately was so foggy we could hardly see each other let alone anything else. Still, are back there to meet Jo's parents in a few weeks so will hopefully try again then.
Next morning took a boat out to the Chinese mainland, then flew into our first Chinese City. It kind of feels like this has been a bit of a long blog so far so will leave China until the next blog. Just will finish by saying so far China has been really, really good. Apart from last night, that is. Our tour leader has a saying, TJC (Thats Just China). She uses it for the wide variety of things that happen simply because thats the way China works at times. Like last night finding out an hour before our train departed for our 8 hour overnight journey that they had removed the 'Soft Sleeper' carriage we were booked on and downgraded us to 'Hard Sleeper'. Never has a vehicle been so aptly named, hence the tirdeness mentioned at the start :-)
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